


A Thousand Moments and a Heartbeat

by concerningwolves



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-19 21:51:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9461753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concerningwolves/pseuds/concerningwolves
Summary: They say your life flashes before your eyes when death comes for you. Romeo Montague saw a life, for sure; but it was not only his.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Fun story behind this: I'm studying Macbeth and my best friend is studying Romeo and Juliet. As much as I love Lady Macbeth and the anguish of Macduff and Macbeth once being friends, nothing will ever beat a very gay Prince's cousin. So instead of revising Lady Macbeth's "unsex me here" speech, I decided to write some really kinda dark (but with a happy ending) Romcutio.   
> Hope you enjoy the fruits of my misspent revision time :D

He breathes in. A shiver tingles at the top of his spine.

The light is dying, too. 

Somehow, Romeo Montague finds comfort in knowing he will not go alone. Death must come for everyone. It came for Mercutio, the sunburst of Verona, brighter than Helios and burning with something twice as fierce. It came for Juliet, glorious as a rose and sure as sunrise herself. It came for Tybalt, with a kiss of cold steel flashing at the end of Romeo's shaking arm. It came for Paris in a fleeting gasp of panicked thought. In this moment at the end of a million lived hours and a million more unknown, here on the cusp of the close, Romeo realises that it must come for a hundred a day. His hour is nigh and the light fades with him, and a thousand more say their goodbyes too. 

But Romeo feels so alone. 

Romeo's heart had been so inflamed with passion for passion's sake; it thwarted reason and shunned scepticism. Mercutio had said as much, had he not? He, who laid down his life to defend a friend's name, had been aright of it. And like every flame that burns, the feelings he held for Juliet sputtered out. If anyone were to ask he would say that he is here now because of her, because if life would tear they two asunder he would at the very _least_ join them in death. If anyone were to ask, though- and who would ask in Death's darkling fathoms? Nobody, not one soul, mortal or elsewise. Death holds nothing for a Montague and a Capulet, and everything for Romeo by himself. Death holds Mercutio; and at least this way, he will rejoin his friend in eternity rather than live with so much blood on his hands. Benvolio will join them in time. A long one, if God could be so kind to his cousin.

They had been children, once. Strange to think, since adulthood came upon them with a summer evening's thick heat and a morning's greensickness. They had been small boys who tore barefoot down red-brick streets: Romeo with his blonde tangles turned to gold, Mercutio's long dark hair flying as he went ahead, and Benvolio padding behind with Tybalt playing at being a stormcloud. Benvolio always had a book in his arms. Mercutio was always ready to tease. Romeo always had a girl, even then. Some things not even the treacherous passage of time could change. Tybalt was hiding is sunlight, and hid it until the brightness winked out. 

Oftetimes, Mercutio would steal the fruit from under stallholders noses and scarper in a scarlet-purple flash. He was a wild storm: cold and biting by turns, his wit sharper than his sword. Mercutio was cut from the cloth of princes and styled himself a rogue; it took both Benvolio and Romeo to hold him fast in some mimicry of civility.

Before Romeo threw stones at Juliet's balcony, Mercutio threw them at his. Across the rooftops like witches they flew, like godless things reckless and feckless in their abandon. Come morning, Benvolio would meet them by the old fountain and he would _know_.

Benvolio was- is, _is_ \- a grounding force. Probably why he will live, Romeo thinks distantly. Each thought is but a fragment, like sunlight falling to shatter against a puddle. Benvolio was of the sort who knew things, true to himself and truer to all others: if it was his silence you wanted, you would get it; advice came free; words were endowed with a caring look in those soft eyes. Benvolio knew why Romeo lived as he did, too. He knew all about the men Mercutio lay with, and knew all about the jealousy which twisted around Romeo's heartstrings.

"Gentle cousin, you must abandon this folly and lift your heart." Benvolio told him in the stillness of the sycamore grove, Romeo and he cross-legged in the dirt. Heat hung heavy above the red baked stones of their courtyard, turning the very air a-shiver; but under the trees, the earth was cool and dusty. It trickled through Romeo's fingers as he trailed patterns in it, tracing a never ending abstracted loop. He read about soulmates once, about being connected by a threat that could never break. Romeo scowls and sweeps his hand across the dirt, obliterating it to a blank canvass. "Be glad that Mercutio knows not your feelings, and still names you friend. It would end in naught but pain, on your side and his both."

"Aye, so you say. As like as the sun shuns the night." Romeo agreed sullenly, running a hand through his hair. He could not meet his cousin's eyes.

"Tis as like he will name you fool." Benvolio added with the subtlest of smirks, the expression hidden in the light of his eyes. Romeo had to crack a small smile at that. Mercutio no doubt would; he, who lay with men and women and truly loved neither.

Why should he love Romeo?

The next day, Romeo flung himself headlong into the first of a long run of women. He had a blank canvass to work from. 

In the crypt, he exhales slowly and his and brushes lightly over the fingers of the last. Beautiful Juliet: with her it all ends. It is almost a relief. Verona has been scorched, yes, but so has Romeo.

Mercutio had a brother. Valentine. The boy was hot-headed to tell the truth of it, but likeable enough for all that. His parents certainly doted on the younger sibling, who entered their lives as a ray of hope in the uncertain darkness of Mercutio's early teenage years. There was a boy they could shape to be more _proper_ , more...

 _correct_.

"You killed him." Valentine had hollered. Never so loud as his brother until then, reaching for Mercutio's fallen sword. The steel of the blade was reflected in the terrible steel of Valentine's eyes, in the hurt, the anguish. Romeo saw his own stricken face in them, mere seconds before Valentine punched him. "The blood of my brother is on your hands. It was for you he died; for the love he bore you. And for the love I bear him, even now, naught but thine own death will wash the stain from you." The boy had spat in Romeo's face, the face which was already spattered with the last of Mercutio's lifeblood. Benvolio was watching quietly, bowed by his grief.

His cousin only ever wanted peace.

That thought boiled in Romeo's veins, a fire set by the anguish shining in Valentine and by the memory of cold steel sliding under his arm. For a moment, Mercutio's eyes had been gazing into his and one of those beautiful, beautiful, terrible smirks curved his lips. Then it was all wrenched away from Romeo and the vile creature who broke his world fled like a fiendish thing.

Tybalt.

Although, it was never really Tybalt. Nay; it was Romeo who took up steel and said it was all for the love of his Juliet.

It all comes back to Romeo, and Mercutio.

To say that his pursuit of Mercutio was entirely without reciprocation would be a lie. That summer evening in the cool of the fountain... teetering between adulthood and boyhood; Romeo, Mercutio, Tybalt, Benvolio. When they drank, it was to a friendship they knew would end with the daylight. It was over months before, truth be told, but Romeo could not let go; the moor fool he. He, who anchored them together, until he drank too much and came to blows with Tybalt in an alleyway on the walk home. The cobbles were still warm beneath his feet, but the walls were bleeding, bleeding and the daylight was gone.

It was Mercutio who helped him up. Mercutio who cleaned the blood from his knuckles and Mercutio who kissed him, all tongue and soft lips and oh... _oh_. Would that he remembered. But they were all so drunk and now Romeo is uncertain. It could have been another dream. Only, that dream left bruises at his hips like fingerprints and teethmarks hidden inside his lip. The memory still twists down his spine in a beautiful shiver.

Romeo breathes out.

The shiver pools at the base of his spine.

As Venus takes her light steps across a wisp of faded cloud, Helios dives below the horizon. Soon Orion will buckle his belt and Andromeda and Perseus will splay out in the sky. The hare and the wolf and the bears flee before Artemis while gods watch, and down, way down below their eyes of burning stone, Verona falls to the night to end all nights. Romeo turns to death with a little smile. Mayhaps a city will cry and bleed for the children she has lost, but Romeo strolls onwards into that night safe in the knowledge that his sunburst awaits. 

Mercutio welcomes him in the light, and Artemis pauses in her flight across the starr'd sky to smile, and rejoice. 


End file.
